Alleviating poverty using small business training

Ndeipi! started off well with parents and guardians of students who are involved with Makomborero attending the sessions. The attendance has been amazing with an average of 95% turnout at each of the 3 sessions we have had. The level of interaction and engagement between the participants and trainer has been very encouraging.

In the 1^st session, Chris who is the trainer spoke to the participants about good business principles - hard work, being accountable of one's actions and taking responsibility for one's mistakes as well as learning from them and not having a victim mentality mind-set. He advised that before starting a business, market research is key so as to identify how best to serve the community and also maintain good customer relations. He discouraged participants from borrowing to start a business but to be content with what they have.  Each participant was given a pen, a journal and an envelope to help with good record keeping.  They were given $1 loans as start-up capital and had to come up with a project at the next session.

Testimonies and brilliant projects were shared in the 2^nd session.  These included: buying and selling of tomatoes, cell phone fast charging cables, perfumes, maize mix snacks, boiled eggs, making of floor polish as well as buying fabric and sewing head scarfs. Significant profits have been recorded across the projects. Some participants bought clothes packs for $1 to boost their businesses and resold these for a profit.. 

More testimonies of the clothes packs were shared in the 3^rd session.  The clothes sold fast and with the profits, participant’s ventured into bigger projects. Here are a few of the testimonies:

One lady bought 4 metres of African fabric and sewed kids' African attires for Africa Day and she has made an additional income of $73.

Another lady bought ladies underwear with the additional income of $12 from selling baby clothes.  Her income increased to $30 and she has now added boy’s underwear to her stock. 

A unique testimony is of one lady who bought seedlings and manure to start a vegetable garden. She noticed that in her community people do not have vegetable gardens. We cannot wait to hear more about her prodeuce has done on the market.

The participants feel empowered.  It’s still early stages, but they feel they can now sustain their families. With the knowledge gained so far, they are confident that their businesses will be successful as they have a full understanding of how to run them in a professional way. 

• Breakdown_of_expenses_for_Ndeipi_workshop.xlsx (XLSX)

Preparations for the recruitment of Ndeipi! 2024 workshop are underway.  Chris Nenga, who runs the workshop has approved the dates for the training sessions with a total of 6 sessions being conducted this year.  The dates will be as follows Term 1 – 11^th March and 15^th April, Term 2 - 20^th May and 1^st July and Term 3 - 19^th August and 30^th September. 

We have sent out the letters to parents and guardians and are already signing up!

We will recruit from parents and guardians of our current students, both residential and non-residential.  We will also open the course up to our Mobile Science Lab students’ parents and guardians.  Many of our Mobile Laboratory students are from Epworth which is one of the poorest high density suburbs in Harare and we are thrilled to be able to make an impact in their lives.

Makomborero Zimbabwe covers the cost of the course, transport costs and refreshments for the workshop.  Bags of baby clothes have been bagged into smaller capital starter kits which participants can purchase with the initial start-up capital to generate sales.

We are looking forward to the start of the workshop and share the amazing testimonies on how a $1 capital input can change the life of a person if they think outside the box!  It’s not about how much you have but what you can do with little you have.